For five years now, I have been advocating for our currency to be strong rather than for salaries to be increased. Not because those collecting salaries from the government are a minuscule few or because of the tendency that makes the prices of everything skyrocket. No. and not because the implication will push a lot of small and medium-scale businesses to death because they cannot afford it or because even big businesses and the government itself must retrench a lot of staff to accommodate salaries in a growing budget.
Browsing: Hassan Gimba
This text was published three years ago when Nigeria marked its 60th year of independence. Nothing has changed except for the age, now at 63, as the conditions remain the same. The text is therefore being reprinted today with only one change: @60 has been replaced by @63.
This was first published by Daily Trust on Saturday, 17 November 2012. It encapsulates my mission and how I want to be remembered.
In the past three years, at least eight African countries have witnessed military coup d’états. This is coming when it was thought that Africa’s democracy had come of age when we were beginning to think that coups had gone for good, consigned to an era in the past when African governments were led by the military.
At about 1 am, on the cold night of Friday, August 2, 2019, exactly two months after celebrating his 34th birthday, Malam Abubakar Idris, commonly known as Abu Hanifa Dadiyata, or just Dadiyata, was abducted in front of his house at Barnawa, a quiescent area of Kaduna.
We have looked at various forms of government in the first part of this treatise. We ended with the posers, “Can we continue this way? Is it the fault of the system or the operators of the system? Should we scout for a better system or better operators? Should we look inwards? Will a system in tandem with our inner being be the answer to our multifaceted and ever-growing problems as a nation?” We signed off with this thought: “Perhaps we have been imposing on ourselves systems that are alien to us, to our culture, to our souls.”
Since man became aware of himself and realised that whether by mutual arrangement or contrived by nature, there are always leaders and followers, communities fashioned out ways and means in which to live together under organised systems to regulate and conduct their affairs.
Before going to my topic, please allow me a little digression. I want to start by appealing to the federal government to please stop the charade and for the people to not take their eyes off the goalpost. Or where do you place the ongoing drama about the former Central Bank Governor’s arrest, arraignment, and re-arrest?
Last week, the federal government, through the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), banned two loan app banks, permanently removing them from Google Play Store and initiating the process of deleting their respective apps.
Who has not had an old car before? The type of car that makes you become a friend to the mechanic? This is because when one issue is resolved, another rears its head, necessitating you to visit again. Sometimes the problem may be those of “rings”. Repair them and the gearbox seeks your notice. Pacify it, the brake pad packs up. Change it; the shock absorber begins to get shocked.